2006 Total Solar Eclipse

Photo Gallery C (Inner Corona Composites)

Photographs by Fred Espenak

The total solar eclipse of 2006 crossed northern Africa and central Asia. Among the many countries in the path, Libya, Egypt and Turkey attracted most eclipse chasers because of their favorable weather prospects and long duration of totality. NASA's 2006 total eclipse website has detailed predictions and maps of this remarkable event.

Gary Spears (Spears Travel) and I led an expedition to the northern desert of Libya for the eclipse. Our March 29th rendezvous with the Moon's shadow took place about 300 kilometers (200 miles) south of the Mediterranean coast, near a small city called Jalu. There in the desert, Nasser Edeeb and other Libyans had erected an amazing text city to accommodate several thousand eclipse observers.

Arriving less that 24 hours before totality, I had little time to explore our surroundings since I had much equipment to unpack, assemble and test. My primary telescopes were a Vixen 90mm f/9 fluorite refractor (fl=810mm) and a TeleVue Ranger 70mm f/6.8 (fl=480mm). Nikon D200 10.2 megapixel DSLR's were attached to each of these instruments. The telescopes were bolted in tandem on a Celestron Super Polaris equatorial mount.I also had four Nikon SLR's with programmable backs and three video cameras.

A composite image from 22 separate exposures was produced using Adobe Photoshop CS2. Version 105a features subtle structure using a narrow radial filter. This particular image comes closest to the visual appearance of the corona during totality.

A composite image from 22 separate exposures was produced using Adobe Photoshop CS2.Version 105m features exaggerated structure using a narrow radial filter. It also included the Moon's disk illuminated by earthshine (sunlight reflected from Earth).